The loss of one's teeth is one of the biggest health issues in the world today—millions of people are affected by this condition. Moreover, as people continue to live longer, this condition will continue to grow and more and more people will rely on dentures to replace some or all of their teeth as they age. Dentures, however, can be embarrassing for some people to wear. Many elderly people, for example, rely on dentures to carry out many of their daily activities. For instance, not only can dentures provide one with the ability to chew and enjoy a good meal, they can also help people speak properly, as well as put on a confident smile.
Although dentures provide many advantages to a patient, the patient may be required to visit their dental practitioner (e.g., a prosthodontist) multiple times and the practitioner may also have to rely upon an equal number of laboratory procedures (which can include things such as individually setting teeth in wax forms based on data provided by a dentist, which can be time consuming and labor intensive) before the dentist can obtain a suitable set of dentures with the right look, feel, and fit. At each visit, the practitioner may send an interim denture back to a denture manufacturer for any adjustments that might need to be made, which can require the manual labor of highly skilled technicians. Because of this, denture fabrication appears to be more of an art than a science—a particular adjustment to a denture, performed by a given technician on a given day, may be different than the same adjustment by the same technician on a different day. Any slight error in the placement of one or more teeth in a denture (e.g., a lower or mandibular denture) may render it incompatible with a counterpart denture (e.g., an upper or maxillary denture). This error-prone and inefficient process of fine tuning a denture increases dental costs, and can frustrate both the practitioner and the patient. Thus, there is a need for improved dental devices and systems and methods for the same.